F1

The big Super Bowl spot for Brad Pitt’s F1, one of the summer’s biggest question marks, continues the good work done by last year’s first trailer, focusing on multi-sense immersion. It’s set to be the most authentic racing film we’ve ever seen, made in collaboration with the governing body behind Formula One and filmed during actual events over the last couple of years, and the stripped-back new ad highlights such authenticity. Hopes are high with a giant budget and backers Apple still waiting for their first genuine box office hit but if anyone can make this kind of unlikely magic happen, it’s Joseph Kosinski, who also steered Top Gun: Maverick from curio to blockbuster.

Smurfs

In year that’s lazily bringing back more franchises than ever before from Jurassic World to Final Destination to 28 Days Later to How to Train Your Dragon, why not try once again to make Smurfs work? The characters have moved from Sony to Paramount after two connected films and one reboot and all bets have now been placed on Rihanna as Smurfette, following in the footsteps of Katy Perry and Demi Lovato. After all that wait, is the new Rihanna album going to be a Smurfs soundtrack?

The next chapter in the story of soda

A wildly ambitious ad here from Poppi, that slightly more expensive and substantially less tasty alternative to regular soda. According to the voiceover, Poppi is what what your kids will think of when they think of soda! Poppi is the next chapter in the story of soda! It’s enough to scare one into actually drinking Poppi.

Super Bowl ads always lean patriotic – Budweiser Clydesdales, etc – but this year had an especially awkward edge. The current political divide is stark, and the president who is currently attempting to dismantle much of the government was in attendance tonight. And yet many of the ads and game promos, starring A-list celebrities such as Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, blithely championed American iconography: freedom, flags, the open range and, of course, football. That’s the job, but especially absent any topics considered “woke” (Kendrick’s half-time show notwithstanding), the disconnect was striking.

Carl’s Jr brings back bikinis

Eight years after ditching the strategy of using models in bikinis to sell their burgers, Carl’s Jr returns with TikTok influencer Alix Earle doing just that.

Well, tonight was not the romcom sequel for Taylor Swift. You do not need to understand football to know that Travis Kelce’s team didn’t play well. No shots of Taylor cheering during a pivotal moment. The Chiefs, and TNT, were never underdogs, but didn’t even have the semblance of being underdogs this year, and popular sentiment was solidly in favor of the other team. Taylor even got some boos when she appeared on the jumbotron:

She did get some support from Serena Williams, though. And she will be fine, of course.

Andy Reid’s side hustle

Andy Reid, leader of the Kansas City Chiefs, is making a play to fill the void of America’s favorite NFL coach left by … no one … with this riff on the side hustle. First it was Zoolander-esque hand-modeling – the better to show off what three Super Bowl rings you have – and now it is Skechers no hands slide-ons.

Here’s Sam Wolfson’s great four-star review of tonight’s half-time show:

Novocaine

As audiences prefer to stick with known quantities like Keanu Reeves, Gerard Butler and Jason Statham, Hollywood continues to try out new action stars with mostly middling results. Aaron Taylor-Johnson couldn’t get anyone craving some Kraven the Hunter, Henry Cavill scored two flops back-to-back with Argylle and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and this weekend, Ke Huy Quan’s first leading vehicle Love Hurts went nowhere for nobody all at once (it opened to a pitiful $7m). Will they warm to Ana de Armas in John Wick summer spinoff Ballerina or maybe Jack Quaid, best known for Amazon’s The Boys and last month’s Companion, in gimmicky caper Novocaine? He plays a man incapable of feeling pain whose girlfriend is kidnapped. Given the pricey placement of this new tease, it’s clear that Paramount is hoping for big things from a film that looks like it has a very small budget.

All said and done, Kendrick’s “Hey Drake” impish grin is definitely the meme of the night. Some highlights from what remains of the site formerly known as Twitter:

Cher turns back time for Uber Eats

Uber would like you to know that they too know the memes on Cher not aging – in another budget-flex ad clearly inspired by one of the greatest ever Twitter (never X) threads, Cher uses her powers of timelessness/Uber Eats to turn back time … to the era of witch trials.

Walton Goggins’s AI goggle glasses

Walton Goggins is the latest celebrity to hop on the AI endorsement train, for GoDaddy’s Airo, a generative AI service for small businesses. Lol that the ad compares AI’s ability to produce things you don’t know how to make – like a logo for Walton Goggins’s goggle glasses – to the skills of … a human actor.

I think you should eat

The internet’s favorite IYKYK comedians Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson bring their signature absurd comedy of manners to this Totino’s Pizza Rolls spot that is basically an IYKYK ad for Robinson’s Netflix series I Think You Should Leave. I am personally delighted to see what deranged platitudes they can deliver in under 10 seconds.

There’s also some footage of the guy who was tackled and removed during the performance after he rushed onto the field with a Palestine flag:

Here’s the full half-time performance if you missed it:

Muppets on vacation

No one has quite figured out what to do with the Muppets ever since they returned in 2010’s rather wonderful movie. There was a middling sequel, a one-season ABC series and a one-season Disney+ series, the characters currently stuck in Disney’a vault until someone else reboots them. They’ve been let out for a brief appearance in this Booking.com ad, their umpteenth Super Bowl ad that, as has become standard, doesn’t really know what to do with them.

Dove goes for body positivity

In a spot aiming for serious and sentimental, Dove makes another case for changing the way we talk to girls about their bodies, comparing the joy a three-year-old finds in running to the self-hatred a 14-year-old feels about her legs. No product, just a call to treat girls better, becauseone in two who quit sports are criticized for their bodies. Oof.

David Beckham’s long-lost brother?

In an ad clearly going for the “most cinematic” award of the night, David Beckham learns he has a long-lost brother, whom his parents named “Other David”. Enter Matt Damon, playing Other David, and the pair bond over a pint, “soccer” (meaning “football”) and requisite Ben Affleck ribbing.

In surround sound:

Harrison Ford waxes poetic for Jeep

Wow, Harrison Ford is really feeling his Yellowstone era (he stars in 1923). The actor appears, mug in hand, in a lodge by the mountains, in stoic main character mode for a video essay on the importance of writing your own story, life’s owner’s manuals and freedom, etc. Some shots of American soldiers and the beautiful Rockies gives an extra layer of weird patriotism to this rambling Jeep ad, one of several weirdly patriotic spots tonight.

A serious note for climate change

A break from things to buy with a spot on something more pressing: climate change. The ad, from a group from Science Moms and the Potential Energy Coalition, is blunt on the point that we’re running out of time to make necessary changes for the climate, and to give our children the world we promised. The ad apparently only aired in LA and on streaming, but will still presumably reach millions, along with all that AI promo.

Is there any celebrity who isn’t there tonight? Apart from Drake ofc:

One of the best SNL Super Bowl skits imagined a world where the half-time guest cancelled at the last minute and was replaced by Broadway musical theatre actors. Cue horror:

Stop enjoying those mozzarella sticks

It’s time to back away from the snacks thanks to a rollercoaster ad here from telehealth company Hims and Hers. First we’re scared – obesity is a deadly epidemic that kills millions - then we’re angry – there’s a $160bn industry that profits from urging us to lose weight – then we’re relieved – the answer lies with, you got this, Hims and Hers and a range of effective but, wait, still not exactly free medications. Now we’re hungry again.

Still hung up on Not Like Us over here, the second of two Drake diss tracks (the other being Euphoria) that Kendrick performed to the largest audience of his career. Interestingly, Kendrick made some adjustments to the lyrics for the broadcast – he notably skipped over the word “pedophile” (the center of Drake’s defamation lawsuit against UMG), but did get the whole crowd in for “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor”.

And, well, he said this. Not a good night for Drake:

The Bud Light boys are back

Bud Light smartly recruited the two most Bud Light-y of celebrities – longtime rep Post “Solo cup on stage” Malone and comedian Shane “hold my beer” Gillis – for this year’s spot, fittingly set in an archetypical suburban cul-de-sac. The message? Bud Light lets dudes be dudes. Somehow this successfully toes the line between “America, fuck yeah!” and “actually could be fun”.

Häagen-Dazs slows it down

Fast and Furious fam Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Ludacris slow down thanks to the smooth jams of Smokey Robinson and an ice-cream bar. There are shades of a 2000s-era Viagra commercial thanks to the mood music, Pacific Coast Highway locale and vintage car.

Kieran Culkin is baby beluga

Kieran Culkin, the former Succession star on the awards circuit this year for playing a very Kieran Culkin character, appears here as a very Kieran Culkin character who is also a financially savvy beluga whale. I think this counts as part of the Oscar campaign?

Go away, Doja Cat

In a year that’s more stuffed with celebrity ads than usual, a rather funny use here of a rather funny Doja Cat forcing her way into Taco Bell’s celebrity-free Super Bowl ad. Get her on SNL!

Jurassic World: Rebirth

While the Jurassic World movies might have failed to reach the lofty heights of Jurassic Park, I’d argue they were mostly more successful than the two films that followed it. That, some hard-to-shake nostalgia and the pairing of Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali make it difficult not to get just a bit excited about the still completely unnecessary Jurassic World: Rebirth. The new spot is essentially a remix of the recent trailer but then that was a remix of everything that came before anyway.

It appears that someone briefly crashed Kendrick’s performance with a Palestinian flag with the words Sudan and Gaza written on it, even getting on the set’s GNX car.

According to Guardian sports editor Bryan Graham, who is at the game, the person waved the flag for about 45 seconds before security guards tackled them.

Tipsy on sugar

Shaboozey might not have won any Grammy awards for his monster hit Tipsy but he did get the chance to sing It’s a Wonderful World in a Super Bowl ad for Nerds gummy clusters, so every cloud …

Kendrick really will not give Drake a break, even taking a fresh swipe at him during the show. “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” he said during one tease of Not Like Us, referring to Drake’s defamation lawsuit over the track.

Even abridged and censored, the song was still an astonishing W for the rap beef. Even rumored former Drake paramour Serena Williams was on stage for the occasion. Naturally, it also lit up the internet.

Nate Bargatze balls out for DoorDash

Nate Bargatze is on a roll – after hosting Saturday Night Live for the second time this fall, and thus being one of the more famous standup comics in America, he’s now applying his dry humor to a Super Bowl ad in support of DoorDash’s rewards program. My main question is: where did he get this Met Gala-worthy robe?

Matthew McConaughey vouches for good AI

Another commercial break, another celebrity vouching for some version of AI – in this case, Matthew McConaughey gets stranded in the rain because his booking app doesn’t use Salesforce’s AI assistant Agentforce, while Woody Harrelson has a nice dry meal. An attempt to assuage fears with folksiness, as McConaughey assures it’s “what AI was meant to be”.

Also if Samuel L Jackson turning up wasn’t enough of a surprise…

And here are some closer looks at Kendrick’s show-stopping performance (with guests):

Was it just me, or did that show feel like it flew by? Kendrick ends on a high note with a shoutout to Compton and his collaborator, Mustard, for the GNX track tv off. Kendrick and was confident and in command throughout, SZA sounded amazing, the act was a political statement in its existence – a solid Super Bowl half-time show.

Here’s that moment:

Oh, he’s really teasing and dragging out the intro to Not Like Us, this must feel good. “They tried to rig the game but you can’t fake influence,” he says before launching into the hit of last year.

Well, it happened. We heard “hey Drake, I hear you like ’em young” at the Super Bowl, along with tens of thousands trilling “A minorrrrrr”.

Kendrick is bouncing between the eras – Damn, GNX (he teases Not Like Us, but not yet!), then slows it down with SZA for Luther and their Black Panther hit All the Stars. All smooth and mesmerizing so far.

Oh hell yeah, Jackson once again appears to mock so many criticisms of rap music – “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” – before Kendrick goes into Humble, with his red, white and blue dancers forming an American flag of Black faces. That’s quite an image.

OK, we’re minutes away from Kendrick’s half-time show, and we can see behind the commentators that a GNX is now at midfield, the platform is being wiped down, the smoke is billowing, the lights are going down … almost go time!

If there’s any remaining doubt about whether Kendrick’s going to perform Not Like Us in a few minutes: they cranked it up for the crowd while the stage crew set up for his show …

With the statement released, Drake is as far away as possible (Australia) wearing … this (swipe for the boots):

Drake has spoken! Ahead of Kendrick’s half-time performance, in which he will almost certainly sing his Drake diss track to a 100-plus million people, the Canadian rapper released a statement doubling down on his claim of defamation:

For reference, Drake has sued his and Kendrick’s label, Universal Music Group – not Kendrick himself – accusing the company or prioritizing profits, for a hit song calling him a pedophile, over the truth/his mental health.

Welcome to Magic Mike’s Wrexham

Stōk Cold Brew’s first Super Bowl ad (is this the go-to grocery store coffee now?), invokes the power of franchise brands: Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s Wrexham football club and, more entertainingly, Magic Mike. Good to know Channing Tatum’s still game and still got it.

Nike convenes the female all-stars

This one’s for the girls! Nike recruits a stacked roster – Sha’Carri Richardson, Caitlin Clark and Jordan Chiles, among others – for a spot roasting all the criticisms people will lob at female athletes. Such as: you can’t be too ambitious, fill a stadium, be too emotional, etc. Some sick shots of Chiles doing gymnastics.

Co-signing and cc-ing Hellmann’s:

Glen Powell’s pickup truck fairytale

Glen Powell, a proud Texan and one of Hollywood’s It boys, appeals to his base: women and men who love trucks (especially the Dodge Ram). Powell is so game for anything that this revisionist fairytale of a man and his three bear-ish trucks is actually pretty charming.

Kendrick Lamar’s gig as the half-time show performer arrives at an unprecedentedly great time for the Compton-bred rapper, and a very bad time for Drake. The two stars’ rap beef last year lit up the charts and the culture; last week, Kendrick stomped the nail in the coffin by winning not one but five Grammys for his diss track Not Like Us, a masterpiece of studied hater energy. I will not soon forget the image of Kendrick accepting his song of the year award as the crowd trilled “A minorrrrrr”.

It only gets worse for Drake, because it’s likely a stadium full of people will sing that line tonight. There’s almost no way Kendrick, who guested during Dr Dre’s half-time hip-hop bonanza three years ago, will leave the summer smash off the setlist. As for what else to expect … Collaborator SZA is confirmed to make an appearance. And in a rare interview with Apple Music, Kendrick promised “storytelling” – be that on Drake or, more likely, in support of Compton and Black America, we shall have to wait and see.

A horse walks into a bar

Super Bowl regulars Budweiser here to teach us that every young horse’s childhood dream is to help people drink cheap watery beer. Inspiring!

Pringles makes moustaches fly

Another ad with flying facial hair? The always welcome Adam Brody sounds the empty Pringles can alarm, accidentally transforming many a famous moustache (Nick Offerman, Andy Reid) into a disconcerting facial hair moth-like thing.

When Harry Met Hellman’s

A “how have they not done this yet?” moment from Hellman’s, in which Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal revive the famous Katz’s deli scene from When Harry Met Sally. Sydney Sweeney steps in for the role of the “I’ll have what she’s having” granny.

So that reported Open AI ad for ChatGPT has aired – a simple black and white design in pointillist dots, because “all progress has a starting point”. It frames ChatGPT as a tool for human expression, asking “what do you want to create next?” Which is … an interesting framing.

Poor Kendrick getting drenched in Gatorade here by one of tonight’s special guests, SZA. Impressive calm:

Nestle gets tongues dancing

Nestle’s first-time Super Bowl spot for Coffee Mate is a now rare thing: an ad without a celebrity. At least, a visible one – an off-screen Shania Twain gets saddled with a jingle about a tongue left dancing from allegedly delicious cold foam.

Cooking for aliens

One of the laziest pick-up-the-cheque-and-run celebrity ads of the night has Gordon Ramsay being told he needs to cook for some foodie aliens before discovering that a) their hi-tech frying pans are in fact HexClad, a brand he already uses, and b) their leader is Pete Davidson. Worse than it sounds!

It’s a big day for SZA fans – earlier today, ahead of her appearance during Kendrick Lamar’s half-time show, she released four new songs off Lana, the deluxe edition of her Grammy-winning album SOS. The new tracks – Joni (featuring Don Toliver), Take You Down, Open Arms (just SZA) and PSA – are basically updated version of songs that have been floating around for awhile, but still, a win for SZA fans.

As a football game, the Super Bowl has stayed pretty consistent in recent years – the Chiefs versus someone. As a spectacle of American capitalism, it has ballooned. The price of a 30-second spot this year – let alone the celebrities featured in them – surpassed $8m, a new record for America’s most-watched game. Pre-game ads are also busting the bank, going for a reported $4m or so.

That’s not the inevitable growth of inflation; just six years ago, the spots were becoming difficult to sell, the attention not seen as entirely worth the price. But the rise of diffuse streaming platforms means the rare opportunity for millions upon millions of eyeballs looking at the same thing at once – and advertisers are paying for it.

Google’s AI goes for the heart

The night’s requisite tearjerker, about a man using Google’s Gemini AI voicebot to help him prep for a job interview after years off the market as a stay-at-home dad.

One of the lasting images from last week’s Grammys: a prolific hater salutes a fellow prolific hater, as his diss track wins song of the year. The Super Bowl is an almost assured victory lap for infamous grudge holders Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, regardless of the outcome of the game.

Issa Rae does her taxes

Issa Rae drives backwards down a highway to correctly point out that taxes suck and are unnecessarily confusing – the solution being TurboTax. She also gets to play “is it cake?” with a box of forms.

Celebs celebing together:

Uber Eats orders all the celebs

Last year, Uber Eats reunited Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer for a Ross and Rachel-themed spot, this time it flexes that celebrity budget again with Matthew McConaughey as a conspiracy theorist who believes that football was invented to sell people food – with cameos from Kevin Bacon, Charli xcx, Martha Stewart and Greta Gerwig.

Only for salty freaks

Who new Ritz had such game? The saltiest cracker brand has hired the saltiest of celebrities – Aubrey Plaza and Michael Shannon – for their new Super Bowl spot, trying to outdo each other, only to be met with a very smiley Bad Bunny, breaking the rules. One of tonight’s better ideas and smarter use of celebrities.

Like presumably half the viewers this evening, we have eyes on Taylor Swift, who is in her private zone with Ice Spice, the Haim sisters and her family:

Wearing bedazzled (lol) jean shorts with white leather boots:

Making meme-ories already:

And a full look at TNT’s fits – she is at least true to her style with the thigh-high boots, oversized jacket and cut-off denim.

Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg say no to hate

Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg list reasons people hate – because you’re from a different neighborhood, look different, act different, are different – in this spot that calls for people to “stand up to hate”. A nice message, to be sure, though quite hypocritical given that it’s on behalf of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism – a group founded by Patriots owner and noted Zionist Robert Kraft, who has blamed protests against Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has killed an estimated 60,000 people, on “disinformation” and conflated Palestine with Hamas.

Coors has a bad case of the Mondays

An ad that might make you rethink that last beer from Coors, about sloths at work the day after the Super Bowl, perhaps one of the Monday-ist Mondays of the year.

Food Avengers assemble

A pretty smart ad here from app Instacart that turns a standard shopping list into a range of characters storming their way to your day. There’s the Jolly Green Giant, the Kool-Aid Man and even a cameo from the shirtless Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa, making us all feel guilty for how much of that dip we’ve already eaten.

Tripping on Baja Blast

Here’s what I’m getting from this Mountain Dew ad: drink enough Baja Blast and you’ll trip so hard you imagine Seal (the singer) as a seal (the marine mammal) crooning the 1995 hit and dentist office standard Kiss from a Rose – er, lime, in this case.

Barry Keoghan’s donkey gets a website

In a cute and clever spot that capitalizes on both Irish accents and latent goodwill for all Irish donkeys, Squarespace reunites the two breakout stars of 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin: Barry Keoghan and Jenny the Donkey (justice for Jenny!). Except Jenny is actually Don Mosley the donkey, seeking a publicist and agent via his new website.

A lot of futurist ads and American propaganda already this evening. And fittingly, T-Mobile has backed away from celebrities for a primetime spot touting its partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which promises to bring satellite connections to all of the cellular dead zones in the US. Likely won’t be the only ad helping out a tech billionaire this evening!

Michelob’s Ultra pickleball players

My favorite spot of the night so far, because there is no better pair of actors to play to deceptively serious, deviously talented pickleball players than Catherina O’Hara and Willem Dafoe. A delight from start to trophy finish.

Thunderbolts

Disney also teased its other big summer bet Thunderbolts with a 30-second version of a brand new trailer that’s just been released online. “The Avengers are not coming” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Wario-ed Nick Fury at the start of the preview for the sorta antiheroes assemble caper (technically not true given that a new Avengers film has been given the green light) before a series of quips, explosions and an ironically used 80s pop song to lure Deadpool fans to their local cinema this May.

Meta tries distraction

How should Meta distract users from Mark Zuckerberg’s cozy embrace of Trump, nixing of DEI programs and factchecking services on the platform, and very weird comments about masculinity? How about a Super Bowl ad for Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, featuring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt perusing (and destroying) Kris Jenner’s art collection?

Barrymore and Bloom make small talk

Drew Barrymore and Orlando Bloom come together, and compare accents (how to say schedule, etc), for MSC Cruises

How to Train Your Dragon

Maybe one of the least necessary animated-to-live-action transfers we’ve been lumped with for a while, the How to Train Your Dragon spot doesn’t offer anything we didn’t already expect and haven’t already seen before. It feels like the original wasn’t all that long ago and with the dragon looking essentially the same in both, it’s a struggle to know why we’re here again.

Eugene Levy loses his eyebrows

Little Caesars’s Crazy Puffs are so eyebrow-raising delectable that they cause Eugene Levy’s famously strong brows to fly right off his face like a gray, distinguished moth – which makes for images more unnerving than appealing.

Lilo and Stitch

Disney deserves some reluctant credit here for creating a Super Bowl ad that doesn’t just resemble a condensed trailer, turning something eye-rollingly predictable (a live-action Lilo & Stitch) into an advert we're actually surprised by. The 30-second spot has the once-animated, now CG monster invade the pitch, helping to kick off a campaign that will most likely make the most of all Fox and Disney channels in the next few months.

Ben Affleck doubles down for Dunkin’

Aaaand the first commercial of the game goes to Ben Affleck, who would like you to forget that last year he did his Dunkin’ spot with one Jennifer Lopez … but not that he’s forever and always from Boston. This first clip is actually part of a seven-minute short film called DunKings 2, featuring his brother Casey, former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend and Jeremy Strong, poking fun at his Serious Actor reputation.

And here’s that aforementioned Lady Gaga performance:

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

There are many many restarts this summer – Final Destination, Fantastic Four, Jurassic World – but there is one major end. Just don’t tell Tom Cruise. What is now being marketed as the last Mission: Impossible film was once supposed to be the second part of the seventh yet underwhelming box office has changed both title and strategy with Paramount hoping, reportedly against its star’s wishes, to wrap things up. This new spot pushes that selling point hard, a sad goodbye for one of the only consistently enjoyable franchises we have.

She did say So High School …

And one final performance from another noted New Orleans performer – Jon Batiste delivers a spirited and upbeat national anthem with a little jazz flavor, accompanied by a beautifully painted piano and, naturally (because America), fighter jets.

Still rolling through the music performances prior to kickoff – Trombone Shorty and contemporary Christian singer Lauren Daigle, both natives of Louisiana, perform a jazzy version of America the Beautiful. Much more successful than Fergie’s infamously jazzy national anthem.

An especially star-studded Super Bowl this year! Missouri native Jon Hamm introduces the Kansas City Chiefs and noted Philly fan Bradley Cooper brings in his hometown Philadelphia Eagles. And that’s it from us on the teams in this game!

More celebs! In fact, more celebs than usual at the Super Bowl?

Here’s that very patriotic Brad Pitt ad:

Now we’re on to a musical celebration of New Orleans, from jazz to hip-hop, marching big brass bands to bounce, featuring Harry Connick, Jr (and the voice of New Orleans cultural icon Big Freedia). A hype way to start the evening, and convincing that New Orleans is a premiere US city for live music.

On a pure name recognition level, the two most famous people in attendance tonight are Taylor Swift and Donald Trump. One very much wants to be associated with the other, and one would love to have her name out of his mouth.

A brief rundown of their terse relations: Trump, you may recall, published an AI-generated fake endorsement from Swift last summer. The singer – who avoided politics entirely until 2018 and remains loath to make a statement – then supported Kamala Harris with a very Taylor Instagram post calling out said fake endorsement. Trump then posted on Truth Social: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”

So I would not expect them to interact tonight, nor would I want to see it.

A pre-recorded video paying tribute to the resilience and community of New Orleans in the face of the recent tragic truck attack in January. Lady Gaga, all in white, is performing an emotional performance of her Top Gun: Maverick theme to a crowd of locals and some football celebrities. It’s a smart way to nod to recent events and provide a rousing kickoff to tonight’s events. Video to come soon …

Brad Pitt is making sure you know that football is culture. The actor just showed up in a PSA for … the Super Bowl? That was essentially a rambling collage of American propaganda. Appearing in New Orleans – an interesting choice, given the many issues with homes his foundation built there post-Katrina – Pitt waxes poetic on the football huddle as “a metaphor for our history” along with many platitudes on American unity, for a game Donald Trump is attending.

Planes, trains and Oikos

A planes, trains and automobiles theme from Dannon’s Oikos Greek yoghurt: Juno Temple carries Cleveland Browns defensive end Miles Garrett on her back through a busy terminal so he can catch his plane on time.

Remember when Super Bowl advertisers tried very hard to convince people to buy into crypto? (Tom Brady would love you to forget.) Or the year with weird Scientology ads? This year, the mainstream normalization push is for AI. Several companies, including Google, Meta and Salesforce, will have spots touting their AI ventures. And OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, will purportedly have their first Big Game ad, assumedly to make generative AI seem less scary to the average American consumer.

We just had a pretty stirring performance from Ledisi of Lift Every Voice and Sing. Given the NFL’s decision to remove the “END RACISM” logos from the end zones, it’s somewhat surprising the league kept on with the song – one of their big concessions to come out of Colin Kaepernick kneeling to bring awareness to social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kendrick vs Drake! Taylor vs Trump! That team vs that other team! Here’s a look at what you can expect from tonight:

Spotted: one Taylor Swift. Outfit judgment forthcoming.

Ahead of the game, in the latest move of what is shaping up to be the greatest Oscar campaign in recent memory, Timotheé Chalamet managed to get in a car with Kendrick Lamar to talk shop. And be a fan boy, of course. Full clip below:

There are multiple non-football celebrities already in attendance, close-ish the normies. More to come …

Kendrick gave a rare interview this week with Apple Music if you want to look for some clues of what to expect from tonight’s performance: